Man without fibula to pedal around Lake Tahoe

RECREATION
Team in Training guides casual athletes to finish line of endurance events
Participants raise money to fund research and patient services for blood cancers
By Pamela LeBlancAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFFMonday, May 04, 2009
Mike Thompson pedals down a two-lane country road, legs pumping hard as he keeps up with a pack of cyclists training for a 100-mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe.
Thompson, 23, a fitness counselor at Gold's Gym in Austin, has no fibula in his left leg. Doctors removed the calf bone nine years ago and used it to reconstruct his cancerous right jawbone.
That hasn't stopped him from riding with his 30 Team in Training teammates, who will culminate five months of training June 7 by doing America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride in Lake Tahoe, Calif.
It's a program that started 21 years ago, when Bruce Cleland, a middle-age New Yorker, organized a group of friends to run the New York City Marathon in honor of his daughter Georgia, a leukemia survivor. They raised $322,000 for blood cancer research, honed their muscles and strengthened their cardiovascular systems along the way.
"From that seed, the whole Team in Training program was born," says Andrea Greif, director of public relations for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, based in Massachusetts.
About 380,000 people — some 40,000 a year — have gone through Team in Training programs around the country and completed 100-mile bike rides, triathlons, marathons, half marathons or distance hikes. They've raised more than $950 million for blood cancer research and patient services, too.
In the process, the program has changed the face of the typical endurance athlete. In the 1970s, marathons attracted mainly elite, competitive runners. In the 1990s, though, Team In Training helped launch a second boom in marathons, one that drew thousands of women and participants who weren't top athletes into the sport.
"We're definitely the first and the biggest — and the best as well," Greif says of the slew of programs designed to prepare people for sporting events and raise money for charity that have popped up since. "We definitely have inspired a lot of organizations to try to do similar things. We've been doing it so long we've mastered the model."
Some participants sign up to get in shape. Some are survivors or train in honor of loved ones with blood cancer. Others join for the social aspect. "People who come to Team in Training without a connection will undoubtably leave with a connection," says Maggie Caldwell, cycle campaign manager for Team in Training's Central Texas Chapter. "They're motivated by a personal goal and a goal bigger than themselves."
Team in Training provides coached practices and clinics on injury prevention, nutrition and gear. Participants, in turn, raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The amount varies by event, and Team in Training helps by setting up participants with fund-raising Web sites. (Those unable to raise the money pay the difference themselves, but most don't have a problem, Caldwell says.)
Austin participants doing the Tahoe ride, for example, must raise $4,200 each. Part of that money pays travel, lodging and registration expenses, but 75 percent funds research to find a cure and support patient services.
Thompson knows first-hand what that money means to people with blood cancer. He was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 1996, when was 10.
"I didn't really understand what cancer was at that point," he says. "I remember thinking 'Does that mean I'm not going to live very long?' I had to grasp that reality very fast."
Within a week of his diagnosis, he started chemotherapy. The treatment caused complications, and he developed a nasal infection that required more than 20 surgeries.
"It threw me into a whirlwind of pain. I wanted to be alive, but at that cost I didn't know if I wanted to fight through it," he says.
He went into remission the following year, but the cancer returned three months later. In the next few years he had two bone marrow transplants and surgery to remove and reconstruct his right jaw because of a malignant tumor caused by radiation treatments.
Along the way, his father got involved in Team in Training and Thompson served as an "honor" teammate, providing inspiration and motivation for the athletes.
"Faith kept me going, and wanting to be alive and live a good life," he says. "If it wasn't for the research and people that kept me alive, I know I wouldn't be here. That's my life purpose now — to continue (Team in Training) until we can find a cure and prevent this from happening to other people."
Thompson has since met his bone marrow donor, who lives in Illinois, and will see him again in Tahoe, where they'll ride America's Most Beautiful Ride together.
As for the bike training, it's a satisfying, sweat-inducing flipside to all the horrors of cancer.
"It's the best experience I've had in my life," says Thompson, who got a clean bill of health at his last cancer checkup in January.
It's so much fun, in fact, that Thompson has already signed up for the Big Kahuna Half Ironman Triathlon in October and a full Ironman triathlon in 2010 with Team in Training.
pleblanc@statesman.com; 445-3994